The Shooting ou La Mort Tragique de Leland Drum

Willet Gashade (Warren Oates), a former bounty hunter, returns to his small mining camp after a lengthy absence and finds his slow-witted friend Coley (Will Hutchins) in a state of fear. Coley explains to Gashade that their partner, Leland Drum (B. J. Merholz), had been shot to death two days before by an unseen assassin. Also starring a young Jack Nicholson.

In 1964, Monte Hellman and Jack Nicholson had made two films together, "Back Door to Hell" and "Flight to Fury", which were produced by Roger Corman and filmed back-to-back in the Philippines. This film was very much in the same vein, this time shot back-to-back with "Ride in the Whirlwind". Nicholson's history with Corman is well-known, but Hellman's career also came from Corman. His first directing gig was "Beast from Haunted Cave" (1959), a Corman film, which was followed up with an uncredited stint on "The Terror" (with Nicholson). In fact, Hellman did not really blossom outside Corman's domain until "Two-Lane Blacktop" (1971).

The film was written by first-time screenwriter Carole Eastman, who would soon write "Five Easy Pieces", another Jack Nicholson vehicle (and much later the Nicholson film "Man Trouble"). As with many involved, she was a Corman veteran, having been responsible for the music in Corman's "Creature from the Haunted Sea" (1961).

It was not until 1968 that the U.S. distribution rights were purchased by the Walter Reade Organization, the same company that distributed "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). No other domestic distributor had expressed any interest in the films. Walter Reade decided to bypass a theatrical release, and the two titles were sold directly to television. In retrospect, it seems bizarre that this film fell into obscurity, but who could have predicted Nicholson's rise to stardom?

One of Hellman's 'existential' genre flicks from the 60s-70s cusp. Warren Oates and his skittish cohort Will Hutchins are hired by Millie Perkins (the star of "The Diary of Anne Frank") to help her navigate the desert to the next urban centre, or so she says. Soon she is joined by sharpshooter Jack Nicholson, who keeps the boys in line until the surprise ending. There are a lot of neat twists on western convention here - the woman is urbane and sickly, Hutchins is completely incompetent, and as they battle each other everyone is battling the desert as it grinds em down. Unfortunately, several rock solid performances are arrayed around the stilted and extremely irritating Perkins, who is so unappealing that you don't know what everybody sees in her. It's quite majestic for such a tiny-scaled movie, with some truly memorable images, but I also found it more portentous than the content justified, ultimately. The ending is pretty abrupt. Admittedly the sound on my VHS is atrocious which didn't help. Still pretty far out for a low budget western, and enough rewards to at least mitigate the drags.

Hollywood, in the 1960s was a locale rife with young visionaries, sometimes stoned, wandering about like starets in Tsarist Russia. But Roger Corman always had an eye out for serious, energetic, responsible young filmmakers, like Monte Hellman, who could put a movie together on the cheap. "The Shooting" has a great virtue: the unique talent of Warren Oates, who could project simultaneously, and with seeming ease, both strength and anxiety. The props, costumes and desert scenery of Kanab all serve this western well, even if its dramaturgy is weak. It seems more like an "idea," stretched out to 82 minutes, than an involving, logical plot.

Across a desert, two men and a mysterious woman make a mysterious journey. I'm not sure why. Explanations in this film are hard to come by. And the dialogue doesn't help. In one sequence one of the men inquires about a man whom the travelers come across just sitting on the ground in the desert: "Who is he?" Response: "Ask her". "You know him?" No response. "What does she mean to you?" Response: "She likes me". "You know anything about her?" Response: "Ask her".

I don't recall a film wherein the dialogue was so ... evasive. It's not like the film contains some profound message that requires great insight to dig up. Rather, the story comes across as simply having no point. The two men and the woman have no real back-story. Characters are not well developed. From the film's start to its finish, I kept wondering: who are these people, what are their motivations, what do they hope to accomplish? I never arrived at a satisfactory answer to any of these questions.

If the story is pointless, the desert scenery is hauntingly beautiful, especially toward the end. And the film's cinematography does a nice job of showing visual perspective, with tiny human figures set against huge, barren mountains.

The film's acting is acceptable, although Will Hutchins does a really fine job in his performance. Millie Perkins is miscast. With her little girl face, she is totally not convincing as a hardened female gunslinger.

"The Shooting" is a slow moving, low-key Western with some great visuals and a fine performance by Will Hutchins. But the story is pointless. It's the cinematic equivalent of a book wherein every other page is missing.

Most casual film viewers will find Monte Hellman's "The Shooting" to be slow, boring, and pretentious. But serious fans of cinema will be amazed at how terrific this existential morality play really is. Hellman's version of the old West is at once depressing and beautiful, and the rickety production values on display actually enhance the atmosphere. And of course, who can forget that inscrutable ending with echoes to the Zapruder film? This is fascinating stuff for the patient, thoughtful film student.